Broken (in the best possible way)

by Jenny Lawson

Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. —LEONARD COHEN

I’m not sure what the difference is between sleeping and time travel.

I can still afford the expensive medications and doctors’ bills and there are a lot of people who can’t. I’m lucky. I could be sicker. I could be dead. I could be dead. I wrote that twice because I’m saying it with two different emotions. One where I’m so grateful to be alive and another sneakier, terrible thought where I realize that if I do die I’ll get some rest. That’s fucked up. I know it. And as soon as it hits my mind I shoo it away because I know it’s the depression, but this is a place for honesty, so there it is.

We are getting better. Slowly … much too slowly. We are so far from perfect but we build on the shoulders of those who come before us and (I hope, God, I hope) we learn from them and we grow and evolve. Their stories push us forward in good and bad ways, but only if we are willing to listen.

I live with two extroverts, which is helpful in that they keep me from becoming a complete hermit but also terrible because they have no concept of the utter emotional and physical exhaustion that comes from living in a world that is too peoply.

My point is, don’t let other people set your expectations for what is or isn’t important in life, because so often the best moments are the ridiculous laughter at funerals or the mundane but lovely conversations with family or the unexpected friends you make in prison.

I’m not much for organized religion, but I think we all have souls. Glowing half orbs. Flat at our back and round at our chests, like glass paperweights with golden candy-button dots at the center. And as we live, our spheres crack. They splinter with sadness or loss or doubt or pain. Sometimes the splinter that falls out is a loss of faith. Sometimes it’s the loss of love or a betrayal. Sometimes it’s just a lack of structural integrity (depression/chemical issues) that causes irregular shards to fall out. Then we walk around with these slivers missing … these holes. We try to put the slivers back in place, but they don’t fit right anymore and so we leave them. And then we search.

My therapist says I’m too empathetic for my own good. That I pick up on other people’s emotions and feelings and then I feel them myself even when it hurts. And she’s right. That’s why I have to separate myself from others, from even life sometimes … to keep safe the soft core that shines when I find people like me … who are good but broken. Who want nothing but happiness. Who would give you their shoes, or their stories, or sometimes even their own precious, collected shards. The shards that they’ve worked for, and love, and treasure. And sometimes they do give them. And sometimes you give them back some of yours. And you’re surprised to find that these shards fit better.

The world is shattered and we wander barefoot through one another’s broken shards and glittering slivers. And some of us bleed from the cuts. And some of us heal. And if you’re lucky, you do both. We are broken. We are healing. It never ends. And, if you look at it in just the right light, it is beautiful.